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Calling a piano trio album Flip the Script in 2012 might seem like too much irony to bear, but Orrin Evans and his hard-swinging rhythm section (bassist Ben Wolfe, drummer Donald Edwards) invigorate one of jazz’s most commonly deployed — not to mention beaten-into-the-ground — formats. This is Evans’s fifth album for Posi-Tone in two years, including a live big-band disc and one by the adventurous trio-plus-guests (Oliver Lake, JD Allen, Nicholas Payton) Tarbaby. On Flip the Script, the program includes eight originals, a run through “Someday My Prince Will Come,” and a melancholy, disc-closing solo version of “The Sound of Philadelphia,” aka the Soul Traintheme, a fitting tribute to his hometown and the late Don Cornelius. Stylistic shifts abound — “Question” and “Big Small” have a Monkish lurch; “TC’s Blues” lopes along in a summery, toe-tapping manner; “When” is a furrowed-brow ballad — but ultimately, it all becomes a seamless whole.

articles.philly.com

There comes a moment on pianist Orrin Evans’ new CD when he takes on Gamble & Huff’s “The Sounds of Philadelphia,” quietly passing through the tune alone. The piece is powerful and tragic, a resonant meditation on the gap between jazz and R&B and perhaps the shortcomings of his adopted town.

Evans also dips into Luther Vandross’ “A Brand New Day” from the 1975 musical The Wiz, but the tune is a much more orthodox outing, with Evans flying across the keys and pulling chords out like fresh kindling. Throughout this trio session, he burnishes his own modernist chops while paying debts to fellow pianists Thelonious Monk and McCoy Tyner.

Working with bassist Ben Wolfe and drummer Donald Edwards, Evans sounds hard-driving, percussive, and always willing to confront nubby issues. A liquid take of “Someday My Prince Will Come” becomes a welcome respite.  – Karl Stark

www.nytimes.com

Questioning Everything in a Jazz Dialogue: Socratic, Dark and Stormy

Orrin Evans Trio at Jazz Standard

Orrin Evans began one tune in his second set at the Jazz Standard on Tuesday night with a solo piano reverie, ethereal with a touch of the ominous, like Duke Ellington in a sepulchral mood. His dark but delicate sonorities slowly gathered force, until his left hand locked into a two-bar vamp evocative of a walking bass line. Seizing on the cue, the rest of his trio sprung into polyrhythmic action, pulling in several directions at once.

The tune was “The Answer,” one of the half-dozen by Mr. Evans on his forceful new album, “Flip the Script” (Posi-Tone). As unpacked in this set, it had as many soft/loud gearshifts as a Pentecostal sermon, or a Pixies song. Mr. Evans coaxed his fat, ringing sound out of the piano, occasionally calling up some closely held postbop precedent: the teasing chromaticism of Herbie Hancock, the stark modal thunder of McCoy Tyner. His playing was wily and alert, volatile but grounded, shot through with rough equilibrium.

Mr. Evans, a product of the Greater Philadelphia scene, has built a no-nonsense career out of such stuff: during a bantering interlude in the set, he noted that “Flip the Script” was his 19th album. “Neither of these cats are on the record,” he then disclaimed, indicating his bassist, Vicente Archer, and drummer, Obed Calvaire. “But they’re playing like they were on the record.” (Point taken.) He also noted that he’d planned on titling the album “Question and Answer” — in addition to “The Answer,” it includes a twisty theme called “Question” — until he remembered that Pat Metheny already had an album by that name.

His first impulse was a good one, since so much about his style calls the Socratic method to mind. But “Flip the Script” works too. Mr. Evans likes dialectical argument and declarative inquiry: in his bands he often plays the part of a strong-willed instigator.

The nature of his approach was clear from the start of this set, in a version of the standard “Autumn Leaves” so radically reharmonized that it only registered in the final stretch. Leading up to that reveal, the trio maintained the energy level of a lidded pot boiling over — but Mr. Evans, even in his most Tyner-esque jags, was hinting at a shape all along. (He has recorded the song before, but not like this.) There was as much emphasis but less suspense in the trio’s clangorous, full-tilt arrangement of “A Brand New Day,” from “The Wiz.” And there was more elastic mystery in an original ballad called “When.”

Tuesday was the start of a three-night stand for Mr. Evans, with a different group nightly. On Thursday he’ll be leading his Captain Black Big Band, which takes a heavy-gauge approach to Mr. Evans’s core strategy of intelligent combustion.

lucidculture.wordpress.com

Orrin Evans’ New Trio Album Is One of the Year’s Best

Pianist Orrin Evans has been on a creative rampage lately. Recorded at a single marathon session at a Brooklyn studio this past February, his latest album Flip the Script, a trio project with Ben Wolfe on bass and Donald Edwards behind the kit, does exactly that. It’s his most straightforward album under his own name (to distinguish his small-group work from his role as conductor/pianist with his mighty jazz orchestra the Captain Black Big Band.) To steal a phrase from the JD Allen fakebook (a guy Evans has worked with, memorably), this is jukebox jazz: roughly four-minute, terse, wickedly tuneful, relentlessly intense compositions. For lack of a better word, this is deep music, full of irony and gravitas but also wit. Evans’ work has always been cerebral: to say whether or not this is his most emotionally impactful recording depends on how much Captain Black makes you sweat.

Question, by bassist Eric Revis, opens the album with a relentless unease that will pervade much of what’s to come, the rhythm section walking furiously against an evil music-box riff from the piano: the way Evans shadows Wolfe as the bassist pulls away from the center and then returns is one of the album’s many high points and will have you reaching for the repeat button. The first Evans composition here, Clean House, works gravely bluesy modalities into a dark Philly soul melody: the trio’s simple, direct rhythmic rhythmic insistence on the third verse is a clinic in hard-hitting teamwork. With its apprehensive chromatics, the title track has echoes of Frank Carlberg, Edwards coloring it with counterintuitive accents and the occasional marauding, machinegunning phrase as much as he propels it, something he does throughout the album: fans of Elvin Jones or Rudy Royston will eat this up. The quietly imploring, spaciously Shostakovian minimalism of When makes quite a contrast: Evans’ coldly surreal, starlit moonscape could be Satoko Fujii.

A phantasmagorical blues, Big Small balances slyness against gravitas, Wolfe turning in a potently minimalist solo as he builds to quietly boomy chords against the drums, Evans offering hope of a resolution but then retracts it as the mysterioso ambience returns. The piano’s relentless interpolations build to an artful clave rumble by Edwards and then a false ending on a bracingly chromatic reinvention of Luther Vandross’ A Brand New Day, while TC’s Blues, a diptych, morphs from loungey swing to expansive, allusively shadowy modalities that give Edwards a platform to whirl and rumble on. They follow that with an unexpectedly brooding take on Someday My Prince Will Come, then go back to the originals with The Answer, a clever, considerably calmer response to the Revis tune

The album ends with The Sound of Philadelphia, Evans’ hometown. But this isn’t happy tourists gathered around a bicentennial Liberty Bell: it’s a vacant industrial lot in north Philly next to a diner that’s been closed for years and a house that may or may not have people in it. Evans strips Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff’s jovial Philly soul tune to the bone, slows it down, takes every bit of bounce out and adds a menacing turnaround. It’s a quietly crushing way to bring this powerful creation to a close. Count this among the half-dozen best jazz albums to come over the transom so far this year, another major contribution from the Posi-Tone label.

www.downbeat.com

Orrin Evans, Flip The Script (Posi-Tone)
Orrin Evans is a pianist, composer and bandleader whose reputation has been steadily rising, particularly with his Captain Black Big Band. But on his latest recording,Flip The Script, we find Evans equally powerful in the trio setting. From the first tune, “Question,” my personal answer was “Hell, yeah!” And that’s the way I felt throughout the album. Evans and his bandmates Ben Wolfe on bass and Donald Edwards on drums shoot out of the gate at a blindingly fast tempo on this Eric Revis tune, showing off a rare combination of technique and taste. It’s the beginning of a fine ride of musical story-telling with sublime song choice and pacing. Flip The Script is packed with intricate twists, turns and changes. It’s a killer straightahead date with bright, modern edges. On the sad, lovely ballad “When,” Evans has just the right touch, filling and opening space for Wolfe and Edwards to ebb and flow. Edwards’ mallet work on the tune is especially poised and understated. Also fine are very cool takes on Luther Vandross’ “A Brand New Day” and the standard “Someday My Prince Will Come” as well as Evans originals “TC’s Blues” and “The Answer.” My favorite moment on the recording is a solo piano take of “The Sound Of Philadelphia.” Most people know this as the theme song from “Soul Train,” the seminal black music TV show. We lost Don Cornelius, the show’s creator and host, earlier this year. And Mr. Evans, a Philly kid at heart, offers a fitting tribute. It’s a quietly stunning epilogue to a thrilling record.

–Frank Alkyer, Publisher

jazzandblues.blogspot.com

Orrin Evans is a young pianist and composer, well known for his work in the Captain Black Big Band and his solo work as a leader. On this trio album, he is accompanied by Ben Wolfe on bass and Donald Edwards drums. There are echoes of past masters like Andrew Hill and McCoy Tyner on this album, but Evans is definitely his own man and his own spirit and vision shines through on this recording. “Question” opens the recording with the trio achieving a bright uptempo sound of rippling piano over taught bass and drums. Strong Tyner-ish piano is the hallmark of “Clean House” where Evans’ muscular piano offsets a subtle dynamism that pervades the music. The deep nature of the music continues on “Flip the Script” where strong dark chords mix with propulsive bass and drums to make a fast and potent brew. The highlight of the album for me was the storming composition “A Brand New Day” which shows the trio firing on all cylinders. Strength, speed and power all come together here in a very potent performance. Another excellent performance was “T.C.’s Blues” which has a dynamic start-stop feel with strong piano and drums buoyed by by elastic bass with space for self-expression.

somethingelsereviews.com

With a new album release imminent, the productive, peaking pianist Orrin Evans again demands our attention with another bread-and-butter trio event, named Flip The Script. Supported this time Ben Wolfe (bass) and Donald Edwards (drums), Evans produces a no-nonsense program of mostly originals with a few choice covers in another solid outing for this product of Philly.

Flip The Script isn’t a sharp departure or great leap forward from his recent works, but that’s because his recent fare has been uniformly superb. What I can detect with this go around is that his focus is sharper than ever, with each track an entity onto itself, not a single one feeling as if he’s going through the motions. There’s also a conciseness you can’t miss: all but three of the ten selections run less than five minutes, a veritable sprint for improvisational jazz. The long tracks don’t go on much further than that.

As for Orrin’s playing style, the way I portrayed it for the Faith In Action is still appropriate: “The direct way Evans attacks the keys, the playful way his right hand plays a cat and mouse game with the left, and an eccentric portrayal of the blues tradition, Evans effectively evokes the specter of (Thelonious Monk).” There are attention-grabbing little eccentricities, but mostly in the abrupt tempo changes on cuts such as “Question,” “Flip The Script” and especially “TC’s Blues,” a three-part mini-suite that maintains his trio’s strong commitment to swing throughout the changes.

Even on a bouncy, highly melodic tune such as “A Brand New Day” (see YouTube below) Evans is stretching it out to a spritely modern jazz song. However, “Clean House” is the track to go for to hear Evans and his little band cook with intensity, and the “Answer” is not far behind.

The softer numbers portray another side of Evans, one who is as capable of grace and impressionistic motifs as another Evans: Bill. On “When” he sprinkles out notes like a gardener watering his flowers, and takes a blues tact for “Big Small,” working effectively with Wolfe, who lumbers around authoritatively for his bass solo. Evans’ melancholic portrayal of “Someday My Prince Will Come” creatively turns the song inside out into a minor chord dirge, virtually indistinguishable from the other versions, but very appealing in its own way.

The album ends on a somber note: a quiet, solo piano take on “TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia),” a farewell to the just-deceased Soul Train impresario Don Cornelius. This early theme song to the show is also a salute to Evans’ hometown and the brilliant song craft of composers Gamble & Huff, who wrote this first #1 disco song with a very endearing melody with which Evans slowly entangles himself.

More than any of his other recent outings, Orrin Evans poured in heaping doses of his heart as well as his head in making Flip The Script. Evans is obviously not content to rest on his laurels, making yet another record that tops his prior ones.

www.chicagoreader.com

For nearly two decades Philadelphia’s Orrin Evans has been one of the most reliable, impressive, and overlooked pianists in postbop. He’s not a revolutionary, but his music always pushes forward while embracing the best of the past. Thelonious Monk, Herbie Nichols, and Elmo Hope all inform his charged, lucid playing, but he also embraces hip-hop and soul without compromising the rigor of his improvisations. He’s a founding member of the excellent Tarbaby—with drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist Eric Revis, who share his broad sensibilities and quiet progressivism—and his latest recording is with his own steely trio, which features bassist Ben Wolfe and drummer Donald Edwards. Today’s 12 O’Clock Track, “Big Small,” is a blues from the excellent new Flip the Script (due June 12 on Posi-Tone), which also includes a solo interpretation of the MFSB classic “The Sound of Philadelphia.” There’s no missing the overtones of Monk, Duke Ellington, and Randy Weston, but the way Evans complements the halting groove with his wonderfully jagged phrasing and angular lines is all his own.

idigjazz.blogspot.com